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108 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 3.17
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Party Fowl
"I went down to the post
office and picked up this
little chirping box of peeps,"
Anessa Arehart says. Since
receiving her chickens in the
mail a year and a half ago, she
has discovered that they can
be good pets. She has even
taught a couple of them how
to hug. "Valerie is probably the
most like me," Arehart says.
"She does her own thing. She's
usually late."
A few years ago, Arehart and
her husband Beau moved from
Louisville to Harrodsburg,
Kentucky, where they live on a
farm called Little Wing Hollow.
"We don't have a television, so
my entertainment is walking
around the farm and hanging
out with the animals," says
Arehart, who works as an
artist painting portraits of
people, dogs and "nature
goddesses." She took these
lively, rustic pictures of her
chickens with her phone.
While the eight chickens are
certainly lovable creatures,
and they lay more than a
dozen eggs a day during the
summer, one of them is a little
more valuable than the rest.
Madame Curie got her name
from being a little too curious.
(Arehart is holding Madame
Curie in the photo.) "When
she was a little chick, she
was always checking me out,
very interested in what I was
wearing. One day, she hopped
up onto my lap, reached up
and plucked a diamond earring
right out of my ear!" Arehart
says. Madame Curie never
passed the earring. Arehart
thinks it's probably still lodged
in her gizzard. "My friends told
me to kill her," Arehart says.
"But I have a heart. I chose
the life of a chicken over a
diamond earring."
— Thomas Elmallakh